Thousands of crores were invested in making India- Aadhar proof. Many false promises were made to restructure this patchy and largely non-existent infrastructure. A Modi wave at that time convinced few paranoids that it would have a great impact on the system.
With announcements in the air that Aadhar card was said to be used as proof of being a citizen of India, more and more people started getting enrolled. This gave a chance to many forgotten, unrecognized or out of the crowds to become an official citizen of India. An increasing number of enrolments show what Aadhar had really to offer.
It was promised that enrolling for Aadhar card would give access to avail the services provided by the government like public distribution system and the supply of cooking gas and many more. Then India’s insufficient, unsecured centralized data system offered cautionary tales for the rest of the world.
Problems faced by people
Even after UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) ’s huge efforts in providing the best, people still face many grievances now and then. There were reports of errors from enrolment to issue receipts or wrong information entered; all this has left a huge number to deprive of Aadhar card. Those who fall prey to these errors were denied giving the Aadhar cards.
Many families under-poverty who were not issued the Aadhar card were left to their fate to either die or become a victim of malnutrition.
A woman and an 11-month-old infant were refused treatment at hospitals due to lack of an Aadhar card and died. A man reportedly died of starvation in Jharkhand as thumbprint authentication failed for family members who went to purchase subsidized rations. An 11 yr old girl, Santoshi Kumari died due to starvation because her family’s ration card was cancelled as they missed the date for linking their ration cards with Aadhar cards. Likewise, there are many more unreported incidents that occurred due to a problem in the system.
Next shock was for pensioners. Linking Aadhar card to pensions strike out 3,00,000 fake pensioners out of which many were deleted due to either discrepancy in data or mistakes made by over-burden data operators.
This was not the end. The story had many new chapters. The Aadhar card was not left to be used as an ID proof but was a must to have a bank account, a mobile phone connection or to pay income tax.
In our digitized lives, sensitive personal data is available in various data silos-travelling, banking, health records, mobile phones, etc. Aadhar card pushed people to connect their unique numbers to every aspect of life, hindering the privacy of the common man. This resulted in the reporting of a good number of cases of thefts and data breach.
Outrage in people
One after the other announcements together created a rage in people that questioned the legality of this document in front of Supreme court which later upheld it as a identification of this entitled to avail the government services to be a reasonable and proportionate incursion into personal privacy that passed the threefold test laid down by the Supreme Court bench in its Right to Privacy judgment.
Even though the project was upheld in the highest court, a twist that led down the government’s ambitious plans was the key sections of the Aadhaar Act that allowed the private sector to access its authentication infrastructure were struck down.
The infrastructure of this magnitude was not one man’s task. From its foundation, it was correctly conceptualized as a public-private partnership with enrolments and authentication infrastructure being done by private parties. Introduction of Aadhar card promise that Kirana and the small store could use this technology to offer a list of digitals services to their neighbours raising the level of hinterland far quicker would have been fulfilled if it left completely to the government. Now the promise is at risk to reach nought.
Although the government made changes to the legislation hoping to correct the points, the Supreme Court has pointed. But the project that has caused deaths, data breaches, banking fraud, and hardship even before its aims have been achieved is surely not a good one to be continued.
